A Courageous Fool by Todd C. Peppers Margaret A. Anderson

Author:Todd C. Peppers, Margaret A. Anderson [Todd C. Peppers, Margaret A. Anderson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Criminology, Violence in Society, Law, Criminal Law, Sentencing
ISBN: 9780826521620
Google: H5cvDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Published: 2017-08-08T04:11:36+00:00

Virginia death row inmate Morris Mason. The profoundly mentally handicapped Mason did not understand that he would not survive the electric chair. Photograph courtesy of Richmond Times-Dispatch.

At approximately 8:30 p.m., Deans, Snook, and Ingle were asked to leave the death house while the members of the death squad prepared Mason for his execution. Ingle recalls the jarring sight of returning to the death house to find Mason with his head partially shaved.

When we returned we found Morris lying on his bunk, the back of his shaved head glistening from the light outside the cell. He turned to us and sighed: “Oh, Marie, look what they’ve done to me now.” The clothes they had given him dwarfed his small frame. The blue denim shirt and blue jeans made Morris look clownish.

We sat outside the cell, the minutes slipping away. Marie held Morris’s hand. He asked us about death again. Before we could answer, his expression brightened, and he said: “Does it mean I get to order anything I want for breakfast?” For Morris, selecting his own meal after years of being fed in his cell represented the ultimate idea of heaven.

It was 10:30, and we only had fifteen more minutes with Morris. Morris was absolutely determined to make Marie and me “proud” of him. He kept saying: “You tell the men [on Death Row] how strong I was. I’m gonna be strong. I’m gonna be brave. I’m gonna make you proud.” It was like a litany. Morris was holding to this refrain, even as he trembled, to get through the next few minutes. “I’m gonna be strong, I’m gonna be brave. I’m gonna make you proud.”

The overwhelming feeling of bidding good-bye to a child struck me. Marie and I were Morris’s parents for his last minutes. We knew he would make us proud and that it was his gift to us. At 10:45 the death squad assembled outside Morris’s cell. Morris said to us: “I love you. Don’t be sad. Don’t cry.” We told Morris we loved him too.

Morris’s arrested development was evidenced in his final words to Russ Ford. As Morris entered the death chamber with Russ, he turned and said “‘Russ, don’t forget to tell the men back at the row that I was a big boy.’ As Mason’s knees began to buckle, Ford put his hand on the man’s shoulder and said, ‘You’ll be OK.’ ‘Sure enough, Morris walked on in there like a big boy, sat down in the chair and was executed,’ Ford said. ‘I went in reading Psalm 23. Do you think he understood any of it?’”9

Of the execution itself, Russ would write:

I wasn’t prepared for what I was about to see. After telling Morris, “God bless you,” and after the straps were secured and the mask tied on, I stepped back yet kept my eye on him. I would never forget the next few minutes; it would haunt me for years. The current was cut on with a grinding, deafening roar. Morris lunged, his head jerking, his hands raising off chair arms as if a demonic puppeteer was making him wave.

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